Lynching Hill serves as reminder to blacks about violence of slavery times

Memories and lessons from slavery persist in this recollection by Cheatham, as she talks about how whites would lynch or threaten to lynch black men who tried to assert any independence. This lesson is imprinted in the geography, as to this day an area in town is known as Lynching Hill.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Annie Bell Williams Cheatham, March 21, 1995. Interview Q-0015. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JAMES EDDIE McCOY:

And when they have a hanging, they bring and let all the blacks come and
see it.

ANNIE BELL CHEATHAM:

Right, and he said right up here, bless his heart, he could tell you
everything, right up here, where you go up to, up here way you go up to,
I say way you go to New Light. . . .

JAMES EDDIE McCOY:

On Goshen street?

ANNIE BELL CHEATHAM:

Uh huh, when you get up there, when you go up there hill, right to your
left there where you don't see no houses, he said they hung folks right
there.

JAMES EDDIE McCOY:

Oh, that's why they call it lynching hill?

ANNIE BELL CHEATHAM:

That's, that's exactly what he said. He said, he told us many times, he
called and carried us up there, he said they used to lynch folks right
up there. That's the reason they call it Lynching Hill. That's where
they hang, they get you out of your house at night, you better not say
anything, they kill you.